as "The beginning of the Indict, that is of the new year," and they say in their Menologion (p. 402) that on this day our Lord began his public life by preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, when he took the scroll and read Isaias' prophecy: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," &c. (St. Luke iv. 16-30). The civil Indiction of the Eastern Empire began on this day.[1] The first great fasting-time, which corresponds to our Advent, begins on November 15th, "the fast of Christ's birth," and lasts till Christmas Eve—forty days. Then comes Christmas (December 25th) with its cycle of feasts. The Easter fast (Lent) begins on the Monday after the sixth Sunday before Easter (our Quinquagesima); they do not fast on Saturdays nor Sundays during this time.[2] They prepare for Lent by abstaining from flesh meat after the seventh Sunday before Easter (Sexagesima), which they call "Sunday of Meatlessness" (τῆς ἀποκρέω), but they still eat butter and cheese during the week, and they call it "cheese-week" (τη̄ς τυρινη̄ς). The really severe fast, including abstinence from meat, cheese, butter, eggs, &c., begins after the sixth Sunday before Easter. For the tenth week before Easter (the week before our Septuagesima) they have an attractive rubric: "It should be known that the horrid Armenians keep their abominable fast, which they call Artziburion, three or four times during this week; but we eat cheese and eggs every day, thereby refuting their dogma and heresy."[3] The cycle of Holy Week and Easter then comes, as with us; and Ascension Day and Whit Sunday follow, of course, on the fortieth and fiftieth days after Easter. The fast
- ↑ An Indiction in Old Rome was a space of fifteen years arranged for tax-gathering—indicere tributum. See Nilles: Kalendarium, i. pp. 264, seq.
- ↑ The Church of Milan follows exactly the same order as the Byzantines, beginning Lent on the same day and not fasting on Saturday and Sunday (Nilles, ii. pp. 76-77, notes 5 and 6). It will be remembered how distressed their fathers were that ours fasted on Saturdays, and that we eat cheese on Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (pp. 153, 178).
- ↑ Nilles, ii. p. 8. They have a foolish and offensive story about a diabolical dog called Atzebur (ibid.). They use violent language against the Armenians for beginning Lent before them, and they are (or were) equally angry with us for beginning it two days later. These absurd people really conceive as the ideal for the whole Catholic world an exact following of all the local customs of their own patriarchate.
